TV Screened: Minority Report (1.3) – Please, Make Me Care

Detective Lara Vega (Meagan Goode) and precognitive Dash Parker (Stark Sands) tackle their first official case together, tracking a potential murderer whose situation adapts and twists with each intervention by our two protagonists. Unlike the standard situations where Dash’s visions release slowly, Vega’s detective skills come into play and they race against time to stop a murder, discovering that someone is messing with people’s minds and decision-making capabilities.

While the show has promise that remains rather unfulfilled, it lends itself to the kind of socio-social/theological commentary that science fiction is so good at developing.

While we know that Dash solves murders with his details, his vision of a man committing suicide is a clue that things are not as they seem. We learn that someone’s mental capacities are being manipulated so that his decisions are not really his own, and ultimately, he is cleared of all wrongdoing that he’s perpetrated. This raises a question of good decision making and free will, right?

In Romans 7:15, Paul writes, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Yeah- so it’s like that. When I sin, doing something that I know I shouldn’t, I often recognize it in the moment but I still struggle to stop it. While this ‘victim’ in Minority Report is acting, he’s not completely in control even though there’s some internal struggle; he knows what is happening isn’t what is best for him.

But like our struggle with sin, the victim’s situation can’t be resolved on his own. He can’t save himself but he needs an intervention. In this case, Dash allows the good detective to save the man; without his vision of the reality that could be, this man would’ve lost his life. Dash breaks the man’s cycle of ‘sin.’